F I L M

Out of Africa

Catherine Bray

ALTHOUGHcoined some years ago, the phrase ‘compassion fatigue’ began to be used in earnest following the 2004 Indian Ocean Earthquake, which caused a series of tsunamis to devastate parts of eastern Asia. The concept purports to explain increasingly disappointing responses from those expected to dig deep when providing aid to stricken areas. Now widely accepted as a predictable reaction to the constant barrage of harrowing images and information, compassion fatigue is the result of charities competing for limited funds with ever more disturbing campaigns. Other than continuing to ratchet up the shock value of their appeals in a grotesque kind of inflation war, what can agents of good causes do to halt this trend? Film-makers Samantha Moore and Joshka Wessels provide an off-kilter answer with their new film, a six-minute short documentary. The Beloved Ones deals with the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Africa, but there are no poe-faced presenters doing to-camera pieces against a backdrop of devastated villages; instead, this unusual film is that rare thing: an animated documentary. Animation is no stranger to challenging themes – think of Raymond Brigg’s blackly humorous anti-nuclear feature cartoon When The Wind Blows (1986) – but the explicit application of beautifully-crafted modern digital animation to a contemporary issue in documentary form is new. This mode seeks not to trivialise the problems of the Ugandans it portrays, but to draw the viewer in through attraction to the image, rather than a revulsion of it, in what director Moore describes as “almost a Trojan horse approach”. This manoeuvre is a logical conclusion of the recent work of producer Joshka Wessels, whose earlier directing career encapsulates close to twenty films. Wessels, currently living in Rotterdam, has used her ability to speak fluent Dutch, French, English, German and Syro-Palestinian Arabic as a passport to a wealth of countries not renowned for welcoming foreign film-makers, including Egypt, Jordan, Palestine, Syria and Sudan.

An original 2004 film by Joshka forms the basis for much of the content of The Beloved Ones. Focused on Wessel’s experience of how children as young as ten cope with looking after families torn apart by HIV/AIDS in Uganda, the piece is a profile of the people affected by the condition, and attitudes towards it. It is, Wessels maintains, “an uplifting film. In many of the places I have worked, local people – while grateful for the aid they receive from outside – are annoyed that they are constantly portrayed as hopeless, unable to help themselves. Yes, there are problems, but when life is represented as a constant hell, it is no wonder the world becomes fatigued: if you feel you can’t possibly make a difference, you switch off”. The Beloved Ones depicts the struggles of Maureen, a girl coping with raising a family after her mother catches HIV from her husband. Maureen’s determination to continue her education, and her refusal to become a mother herself until after she has finished studying, stimulate greater respect from the viewer than a straightforward catalogue of misfortune. To maintain momentum as a short work, Moore and Wessels have conflated two stories –a strategy which might come across as dishonest in a straight documentary, but which suits the more lyrical, liquid style of Moore’s animation. Of the ‘mother-daughter’ relationship, Wessels remarks: “The most important thing is the message. These two are not actually related and we don’t infer that, but Maureen’s experience of caring for an entire family is presented alongside a mother’s experience of not being able to look after her children. The two stories dovetail, and it is a realistic situation, told in a heightened way”. It will be difficult to measure whether the new film format helps attract some of the attention that the HIV/AIDS epidemic demands, but its more immediate impact is easily assessed: animated documentary can be a highly engaging take on a difficult subject matter.

Catherine Bray is Deputy Editor of Ten4 magazine.